Al Pacino Quotes
-
Actors are always outsiders. It's necessary to be able to interpret - and that gets distorted when you become famous.
-
All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.
-
To be really obvious about something, if somebody straps an M1 on your shoulder and throws you in Iraq, you're going to get a sense of what the hell's going on there. Boy, you'll wake up fast when bullets are flying over your head.
-
When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.
-
Playing a character is an illusion, and I feel that when you know too much about a person, possibly part of that illusion is disrupted.
-
I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.
-
We're charlatans in a way, we're magic people. Part of the behind the scenes stuff is to loosen you up, to make you feel that you are experiencing this. This is my style, I did it in Looking for Richard, too. And I figure, if I can weave it into the actual play and get the audience interested, like the robes going up and down, they'll pay attention long enough to consume it.
-
We were doing Scarface many years ago...and I remember having my coffee and looking at the beach, the surf, and I saw a hundred people looking out into the ocean. I thought, what's going on? Did some whale get washed up to shore? So I stood up on the table to see what it was, and it was the director, Brian De Palma, standing there alone by the surf and they were all waiting for him. And I never forgot that because it represented to me what a director is, what a director does.
-
Take a look at Israel's history and you would know who the terrorist is.
-
There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.
-
I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx.
-
You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book.
-
When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.
-
The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying - even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.
-
There was a time in my life when being dishonest with women was the natural way to be. I finally said, "Hey, I have to stop this silliness."
-
Freedom, baby, is never having to say youre sorry.
-
I've had very deep relationships that lasted for long periods of time with people - you could almost call them marriages, even though I didn't marry. But it was costly.
-
I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.
-
[Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.
-
One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, "The Sea Gull," when was 14 in the Bronx.
-
The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth.
-
I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.
-
Sometimes you're fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.
-
Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.